


more than perfect

by qwanderer



Series: in the habit of saving the world [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 20:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20981888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: There was nothing in the book to tell Anathema how to live her life, going forward.Anathema looked anyway. Mostly what she found was things she wanted to leave behind.She also found a bunch of notes tucked inside by a panicking angel, some of them written on the back of a card that had the phone number of his book shop on the front.





	more than perfect

**Author's Note:**

> This was written A) to work as a stand-alone piece, and B) to tie together the stories to either side of it in this series, which were originally written entirely as stand-alone works. Read as you will!
> 
> The fic is from Aziraphale's perspective, and then I went to write the summary and it came up Anathema. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It was about a month or so after Armageddon had fizzled and died like a dud firecracker, and Aziraphale was pondering the concept of moving in with Crowley, or vice versa.

It didn’t feel quite right.

Aziraphale was all in favor of continuing to build their relationship, but he couldn’t seem to picture Crowley living in the tiny flat above his bookshop, and as much as he loved Crowley, Aziraphale had never actually cared for his Mayfair flat.

He was mulling over this dilemma whilst wandering about, vaguely considering doing something about the levels of dust in the shop when his phone rang. Generally the distraction it offered was unwelcome, but at the moment, he found he didn’t mind.

“AZ Fell & Co., how might I be of service?” he asked, preparing to repel any inquiries about purchasing his most precious books.

“It's Anathema Device,” said the brash American voice on the other end of the line. “You remember me?”

Aziraphale perked right up. “Yes, of course I do, dear. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I need help.”

“Oh dear,” he said. “What kind of help? I’m afraid I’ve once again passed along my flaming sword.”

“Oh! No. Not that kind of needing help! I’m fine! Everything’s fine. Well. In a life-and-limb sort of way. And in other ways, too! I just… well, I just… I guess I could use an ear? Someone to talk to who’s familiar with the context of my life but who also isn’t my mother." 

It was hard to tell from her voice how urgent the problem was and how she was truly feeling about it. 

Well, there was a simple enough solution for that. “Would you like to meet up for tea?” he asked. 

“Oh, that’d be wonderful.” She sounded extraordinarily relieved. “I can catch a bus into the city tomorrow, if that’d work for you?”

Aziraphale agreed, and they scheduled a time and place - somewhere where Anathema could get coffee, as it turned out she wasn’t much of a tea drinker.

Well, nobody was perfect.

* * *

After greetings and ordering and settling in, Anathema folded her hands in front of her. “Okay,” she said as if trying to get something over with, “Well, maybe we should talk about my problem.”

“Your problem which may require the perspective of someone well-versed in the occult, the ethereal, the events of the end times and books of prophecy?” Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps we should."

Anathema frowned, considering that. “I’ve been thinking about this, and yeah, it has something to do with a certain book of prophecy, but more than anything else, it’s a relationship… problem. I. Huh. I don’t want to call it a problem. Not when I’ve admitted it’s a relationship… thing.”

Aziraphale sipped his tea, and hummed in consideration. “Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning,” he said.

She laughed. “Yeah, maybe. Since I don’t have a relationship history that spans the entire history of the world to relate.” 

Aziraphale made a moue, trying to disguise how deeply embarrassed and deeply amused he was by that comment.

She took a breath. 

“So Newt moved in with me about two weeks ago. We knew it was fast, but it was still very much a mutual decision. I guess… we have a lot of reasons to want to see where this can go. To find out more about what kind of relationship we’d have.” She bit her lip. “I don’t want to go along with this relationship just because Agnes saw it. Once, I totally would have. Without question. And that worries me. But also, I guess, one of the big reasons I’m not just happily going along with it is because of Newt. He wants to be sure that I get what I really want, the life I deserve, and not just what one ancestor out of a thousand thinks I should be doing.”

Anathema stared into space slightly dreamily for a moment before she continued. “He’s started doing all this stuff for me, like cooking and… and laundry… he’s really committing to this kind of house-husband role. Which is great. Really. But.” She trailed off, then made a frustrated noise, letting her head droop until her forehead nearly touched her cup. “Oh my god, I feel like such a whiner. I feel like everything I’m saying just sounds like ‘he’s too perfect.’ I don’t feel like I’m allowed to complain about that!”

“Not at all, my dear. I believe you have legitimate concerns. And, may I say that contrary to popular belief, there is indeed such a thing as being too perfect. All the great passions of my life have been for the imperfect. Not Heaven, but Earth. Humans. The creations of mankind. And… one demon in particular, as well.”

Anathema seemed to latch onto the topic as a reprieve from thinking about her own fraught relationship with… well… her relationship. “Right! You and… Crowley, you called him, right? How is he? How are the two of you doing?”

“I’m not sure,” Aziraphale replied, more frankly than he’d intended. Anathema seemed to set the tone for their conversation in such a brash American way, however, that it was hard not to be bluntly honest in return. “Things between us tend to move slowly. We’ve known each other for six thousand years, and so the fact that we have been, in some way or another, courting for perhaps half a century still feels relatively new. At least to me. I worry, from time to time, whether it feels longer to Crowley.”

“Yeah,” Anathema commiserated. “Timing’s always gonna be rough when you’re trying to figure things out with someone else whose perspective is fundamentally different, and you don’t have everything neatly set out in front of you in writing. We have a future now, and it could be long, or it could be short. I’ve been trying to just… do what I want with it while I have it. But sometimes that feels like I’m rushing things.”

“I’m not sure I could rush things at this point, even if I wanted to,” Aziraphale said somewhat mournfully. “Crowley has been waiting so long for me to catch up. I want to be ready for the next step. But I can’t be entirely certain what the next step should be.”

“I think it can be whatever you want it to be. What do you wish your relationship had more of?” Anathema asked.

Aziraphale hummed, and drummed his fingers on the side of his cup. He opened his mouth, but it was a moment before he managed to actually speak the words, “I’ve been contemplating, potentially… cohabitation.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Anathema grinned at him.

“Is it, do you think? We are both of us independent beings, very much accustomed to our own space.”

As abruptly as it had arrived, the glee fell off Anathema’s face. “Ugh,” she said softly, looking into the distance.

“Have I said something to upset you?” Aziraphale asked.

She slouched a little in her seat. “No, no… I mean, this is what I came here for. To talk through the stuff that’s been bugging me about living with Newt. I just. I kind of. Hate myself a little for wanting more space.”

“Oh, my dear, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“But it is! I want to be happy with him! I mean, I am happy with him! It’s not coming out right.”

“No hurry,” Aziraphale said kindly. “Think it through.”

Anathema wrinkled her nose, face moving as if she could physically joggle her thoughts free from wherever they were stuck. “I mean, it really is great to have all this intensive one-on-one time. And the cottage, well, I didn’t live there for more than a couple of days before we got together, so it just sort of… fell into being our place. Which is a great feeling. We’re learning how to be  _ us. _ And I love him. It’s just.”

She froze, her cup halfway to her mouth. Aziraphale made an interrogative noise.

“Oh my god,” Anathema said, eyes wide. “I love him. Hang on a sec, I have to process.”

Aziraphale nodded. “I quite understand.”

He took the moment, himself, to consider how Anathema sounded when she said ‘our place.’ Something… thrummed, soft and warm, inside him at the concept. 

Anathema smiled, as if echoing the feeling back again. “Okay. Yeah, I love him.” She took a deep, happy, terrified breath. Then she pressed her lips together. “I just. I really need to get him out of the house once in a while. I’m still trying to figure out who I am without Agnes, and I don’t want the answer to be ‘with Newt instead.’”

“Ah. I believe I may be able to relate.” Aziraphale’s thumbs traced the curves of his teacup.

Who was Aziraphale without Heaven? He had many answers, perhaps too many, and perhaps he clung to them too hard, because he had needed to fight so hard to keep them.

His life up to this point hadn’t exactly felt like a struggle, at the time, but he was beginning to realize that it had been. A tug-of-war between Heaven, and everything else Aziraphale loved, Earth and humans and food and the bookshop and Crowley. And now it was as if the rope had been cut between him and Heaven, and Aziraphale had snapped back to fall in a tangle of everything that pulled him the other way.

The bookshop had grounded him, tied him to Earth and everything he loved about it. And although he would always love the shop, he wasn’t sure he needed it in quite the same way anymore. He didn’t need to cling so hard to one facet of his personality when he wasn’t being pulled mercilessly in the opposite direction by the forces he had answered to for thousands of years.

Maybe it was time to find a new place.

That decided, Aziraphale shook himself a bit, and focused on what Anathema had been saying. 

“He said he joined the Witchfinder Army to get him out of the house,” she said, with a twist at the corner of her mouth that spoke of everything from fear to fondness. “I mean, he said it almost like it was meant to be a joke, but I think he really… needs something. To get him to go out. And, I mean, I’m not going to hold it against him if he leaves it up to me to provide for us, because I absolutely can. Easily. But he’s desperate to be useful. And I think it would be good for his ego if he was bringing in some money, too. He just. He has a lot of trouble with technology.”

Things were coalescing in Aziraphale’s head. 

“You know,” Aziraphale said, “I might just be needing some help in my bookshop. My very traditional bookshop, which contains very little in the way of what you might consider technology.”

“Oh wow, you… Really? You aren’t just saying that? Because you’re literally an angel and I asked you for help? I wouldn’t want to put you out, I honestly just needed to talk it through with someone. But if you’re serious…”

Aziraphale checked to see how he felt about the concept of leaving the bookshop in someone else’s hands, and it felt… not nearly as terrible as he might once have imagined. “I am absolutely not just saying that,” he said emphatically. “No, in fact, you’ve given me quite a lot to think about in terms of the next step between Crowley and myself, and I believe there’s a good chance of my spending considerably less time in my bookshop, but I don’t wish to close it entirely.”

Anathema’s eyebrows climbed her forehead like ambitious mountaineers, and she gave him a Look. “I see,” she said. 

Aziraphale could feel his cheeks heat at her regard, and wasn't entirely sure why. But he may have had an inkling.

* * *

“Now, there’s no reason to worry about little things like opening at a particular time of day or selling a particular number of books,” Aziraphale told Newt, only encouraged in his convictions when the chime of the door tried to interrupt them. “Or, really, any books, when it comes right down to it. There is absolutely no pressure in either of those areas.”

“Really?” Newt asked, eyes wide. “Are you sure?”

A familiar voice drifted from the direction of the door. “It’d attract too much attention if A. Z. Fell & Co. started having anything like regular hours now,” the voice drawled.

“Oh, hello, Crowley!” Aziraphale greeted. “You remember Newt Pulsifer?”

“Vaguely.” Crowley meandered in the direction of Aziraphale, eyeing Newt from behind his glasses.

“Good afternoon,” Newt said nervously, with a look at Crowley that seemed to ask what a demon was doing here and whether it would be better for everyone if he just sidled quietly out the door to let him do whatever it was in peace.

“Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s harmless,” Aziraphale said, which immediately caused Crowley to hiss in what was clearly meant to be menace, but ended up more in the neighborhood of embarrassed indignation.

Aziraphale patted him on the arm, and Crowley wrinkled his nose in something that didn’t quite manage to be distaste. 

“Are you really taking on an employee?” Crowley asked, changing the subject away from his supposed lack of malice. “Whyever would you do that? You’ve never had any trouble keeping people from buying your books all on your own.”

“Yes, well.” Aziraphale stammered slightly, not wanting to get into the subject for the first time in front of Newt, but also having no desire to lie to Crowley outright. “One never knows when one might need a bit of assistance.”

“So, er,” Newt ventured, “I’m getting the impression that you don’t actually  _ want _ to sell any of these books?”

“There are things I would prefer not to part with, yes,” Aziraphale admitted. “I may be slightly guilty of using this as a place to  _ keep _ books, more than a place to sell them. But you needn’t worry too much about that. I intend to remove the most precious items to my private collection at some point soon, but as a general rule of thumb, speak to me before you sell anything old enough or unique enough to have been printed without a cover price.”

“So if it has a price on it, it’s fair game?” Newt asked. He took a glance around the shop. “Out of curiosity, how many of the books here would you say actually fit that criterion?”

“Oh, there are some,” Aziraphale said breezily. “Here and there.”

“Ah,” said Newt, indicating the kind of understanding that isn’t really much like understanding at all.

“Why don’t you come in tomorrow, if you have time?” Aziraphale asked. “I was thinking of taking something of an extended late lunch, and it might be good to have someone minding the shop while I’m out.”

Aziraphale tried not to sound too dubious about that, but wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. 

“Right,” Newt said. “Tomorrow, around one?”

“That should do nicely,” Aziraphale agreed.

“See you then, then!” said Newt, and skittered out, casting another dubious look at Crowley.

As the door closed behind him, a familiar but not entirely comfortable silence fell over the shop.

“I’d say that went well,” Aziraphale ventured.

“Moving your collection?” Crowley commented. “Are you plotting something?” He gave Aziraphale a fake-hurt look which failed to cover his real hurt. “Without me?”

Aziraphale reached out to pat his hand. “Quite the opposite, my dear. What would you think about getting a cottage?”

Crowley was silent for a long moment, then he raised his hand to remove his glasses, so he could peer at Aziraphale, as if he wasn’t quite sure he could see well enough for this conversation with them on.

After blinking several times, he ventured, “You mean… together? The two of us?”

Aziraphale smiled. “Yes, my dear. It would be a place for  _ us.” _

“Oh.” Crowley’s gaze darted away, then back to him, clearly wishing he hadn’t taken off his glasses but unwilling to put them back on  _ now. _ “Well then. I… yeah. ‘D like that.”

“Wonderful!” Aziraphale said. “Shall we celebrate?” He gestured to the back room, which had become their usual drunken haunt.

“Yeah, could use a drink,” Crowley agreed, but he sounded lighter than he usually did when he said something like that. In fact, he almost sounded as if he were floating.

Aziraphale would choose Crowley over Heaven a thousand times, he realized, with deep and resounding conviction.

What they had was more than perfect. It was real.


End file.
